Well, no wonder you in the US seem to have such a hard time weeding the liberalist cancer out of your system, since those damnable liberalists - Thomas Jefferson, James Madison et al. - were infecting your nation with the ideas of, among other liberalist thinkers, John Locke and Adam Smith, from the very beginning.

(sorry for feeding the trolls, I just couldn't quite pass this one by. I can't fathom how the term "liberal" can be so mangled in contemporary USA.)

They were probably thinking long term in the interest of their stockholders. If they implemented it then they would certainly have a jump in income, but if everyone got mad, then they would definitely lose in the longer term. Charter Communications is the company St. Louisans love to hate. We seriously need some competition here. CableAmerica has a very small grip in the St. Louis suburbs and they seemed like a nice company when I had them. Now AT&T is rolling out U-verse in the area as well so Cha

Well duh. That's what every company cares about, from the tiniest single person company to the massive corporations with hundreds of thousands of employees. At companies with investors, the investors help decide if something will piss off too many customers. What's the big deal?

Actually, I wouldn't say that's the case at all. I know of plenty of companies who are equally interested in social responsibility, their customers and making an ethical profit.

So I guess the big deal is that concerns raised by investors was the thing that had the impact, not concern raised by customers.

In the current age it seems corporations have more rights than people, whereas previously they didn't. If you poison your neighbour you're going to gaol, if a corporation does, there'll be hearings, enquirie

No you don't. You know plenty of companies that think they'll make more money if their customers believe they're socially responsible and ethical. You are proof that their plan is working.

I think you need to take you tinfoil hat off. Yes, some companies are just out for a dollar - not all are. I run a company that isn't and I have sizeable share holdings in other companies that aren't. I'd say there is a 60/30/10 split out there of good/poor/evil.

But the investors were only concerned because they thought customers would be worried about it and leave.

If you are not an insider you won't always have advance knowledge of business moves such as this, leaving the only opportunity to be concerned after the event; leaving two types: those who speak up and those who don't.

That's how the system works. If it weren't investors being concerned the program would have been stopped because concern was raised by the CEO, or upper management, or some marketting dweebs or somebody else inside the company.

I think you need to take you tinfoil hat off. Yes, some companies are just out for a dollar - not all are. I run a company that isn't and I have sizeable share holdings in other companies that aren't. I'd say there is a 60/30/10 split out there of good/poor/evil.

So are you saying trying to make money is "evil"? Or something Charter was doing is "evil"?

Not really. Most companies listen to their customers some even go so far as to encourage feedback.

Charter has now agreed to delay any further rollout, though it won't abandon the plan entirely.

Elsewhere, I have read predictions that up to 10% of Internet traffic was going to be commercially monitored by the end of the year. It might be good for everybody to let friends and family know and to start making privacy-enhancement software easy to use and ubiquitous.

If people don't know about it, they're unlikely to raise a fuss and then we're all sunk.

I'll take a delay, and let the issued get aired, even if it is in Congress, who can't be trusted with those Internet Tubes.

Seriously-- Charter has no right, and it would take expensive and long term litigation to get them to stop it. I hope they learn, and others learn by the example, and that the sum is that it slows it all down.

I would prefer they just went ahead with it and caused a huge PR meltdown. Now they'll simply wait until Congress isn't paying any attention and try it again. They'll keep at it until this becomes the norm for internet service and their customers stop complaining.

A PR meltdown would be juicy, but wouldn't stop them. An implementation delay is as good as it gets for now, in the absence of litigation. The data is just too valuable.... and there's little privacy legislation preventing its nefarious use.

You're right the information is too valuable. We can only hope enough representatives take notice and pass good privacy legislation, but I don't think anyone here is going to hold their breath for that.

None of us were kidding ourselves to think we had privacy anyway, but fighting the good fight is still worth it. I would prefer that the current legislature do something, but it's filled with cowards, and not champions of the people that voted them in.

When dealing with a company that is generally not responsive to customer feedback, the only thing that they're likely to pay much attention to is lost business. If subscribers cancel their accounts and tell them why they are canceling that may be noticed. Those who can't cut the cord with them completely (due to lack of competing options) might still be able to reduce the customer count by arranging for neighbors to share connections via WiFi etc.

Nice try, but Charter DOES have the right. It's almost certainly in the terms of service that their customers agreed to when they signed up. If the customers didn't like the terms, they shouldn't have agreed to them.

I hope they learn, and others learn by the example, and that the sum is that it slows it all down.

If you want the companies to "learn", stop buying their services when you don't like the terms they put on it. No amount of lawsuits, legislation, and con

A subscriber to Wide Open West (WOW!) gave Topolski remote access to his machine, and Topolski then verified that WOW's NebuAd system was planting its own cookies when users visited Google and Yahoo, among other sites.
After examining the TCP/IP packet data more closely, Topolski concluded that the NebuAd box was simply appending its cookies to the HTML code served up by Google and Yahoo.

So lets look at this from the senders point of view, what the NebuAd system is doing is essentially modifying their page and inserting things they didn't intend to be there.
Charter's customers might have signed away their rights but page owners most likely have not.

This action is essentially a violation of the page owner's copyright and imagine what would happen to Charter if say Google sued Charter for copyright violations and demanded similar compensation per violation as the AA's do. That means e

The TOS that people sign don't abrogate their right to privacy, especially with other individuals with whom they communicate who are not party to the TOS in any way. The Charter TOS may in fact be illegal. IANAL, but deep inspection is a radical and unexpected step!

Charter, unlike say AT&T, is usually the sole provider in their own markets for cable, and so there is no competition; it's not a matter of hey-- let's go with TW, Cox, Comcast, etc. That's not the way cable plays, although an attempt to do t

Charter, unlike say AT&T, is usually the sole provider in their own markets for cable, and so there is no competition; it's not a matter of hey-- let's go with TW, Cox, Comcast, etc. That's not the way cable plays, although an attempt to do this years ago was tried.

That's unfortunate, but I don't see why it matters. If you're willing to sign over your privacy for internet access, then your privacy isn't that important to you. You still voluntarily agreed to the TOS. It's not like you'll die withou

That's unfortunate, but I don't see why it matters. If you're willing to sign over your privacy for internet access, then your privacy isn't that important to you.

Or, y'know, some of us aren't interested in drawing false dichotomies between privacy and Internet access.

Congress isn't the right place to settle your local bullshit that 99.9% of the country doesn't care about.

Except for precedence. If Charter gets away with this kind of shit, then there's nothing stopping Comcast, Time Warner, Cox, et. al. from implementing the same system. We need a national precedent (in the form of a court ruling or legislation) set early on in this, and Congress is a perfectly valid place to pursue that.

Or, y'know, some of us aren't interested in drawing false dichotomies between privacy and Internet access.

It's not a false dichotomy. If Charter only sells internet access that violates the user's privacy, your only options for buying internet access from them are "Buy it" or "Don't buy it". Internet access without privacy violation isn't a product Charter sells. You shouldn't be able to take them to court and force them to sell something any more than I should be able to take you to court and force y

You shouldn't be able to take them to court and force them to sell something any more than I should be able to take you to court and force you to sell your house.

Sorry, no. Charter Communications is a corporation; it's very existence is a privilege, not a right. In a sane system, people should be able to petition the government that created a corporation to make said corporation behave in a manner congruent with the public interest.

By that logic, we shouldn't be regulating any industry that doesn't sell "necessities". Ford sells cars that blow up and roast their occupants alive? Oh well, don't buy Ford. Get cancer from the asbestos in your house? Should have thought of that when choosing your builder.

I've seen plenty of coverage on this, but no technical details on how it would actually be implemented beyond there being a mysterious "box" at the ISP. Is it, or will it be, possible to block or restrict this device from tampering with traffic? Or are we pretty much at the mercy of the providers here?

The solution should not require playing games. Rather, it should involve kneecapping Charter's officers. Also, maybe whoever did the kneecapping could scream over and over, "you're just a pipe, you're just a pipe."

I'm a charter customer and received a letter in the mail with instructions how to opt out. It was fairly easy but did require a few minutes to do. Woulda been much nicer had it been an opt-in option, instead.

Right, but if you read deeper, it sets a cookie on your browser to not display targeted ads. It still tracks your behavior, just doesn't show the ads. Charters privacy policy also states that they will turn over any and all information to law enforcement or a subpoena. Also, if you ever clear your cookies (as many, many people do, and tools like spy-bot do) you will have to remember to fill out that form again.

My understanding is that the ISP creates profiles of its users by recording the URLs they go to and breaking them down into keywords. Mostly they are interested in what you type into search engines. Those profiles get sent to NebuAd, who has relationships with ad houses. I don't know who specifically, but I'm guessing Doubleclick & the like.

Those ads, which are already third-party and are not served by the domain you're visiting, are chosen based on the profile from the ISP rather than traditional me

It isn't a "would be" implemented. It's already done. Basically, there is no way to prevent your ISP from altering your traffic, because everything that comes over the wire passes through them. You have no way of telling whether the ads served on a website are the ads that that website sold or whether the ISP inserted them without controlling both ends of the communication.

Dan Kaminsky developed a method to detect this kind of tampering , which at least can prevent ISPs from hiding the fact that they're d

I particularly like the little bit about how they will hold off on implementation while these important privacy concerns can be addressed.

Who wants to bet that addressing this means waiting under a rock until no one's looking and then going forward with substantially the same nonsense?

I would be more inclined to believe that to be read as "they will hold off until privacy concerns can be addressed" should be "they will hold off until laws have been enacted ensuring no immediate action(s) can be taken against Charter".

Privacy will only prevent people like us from advertising to the families of cable company executives. We need 24/7 surveillance of all their activities, where their children go to school, what their wives buy on-line and in grocery stores. We can analyze that data on an open public website. Send out google vans to record their every movement, and inundate them with your advertising messages. Roll out billboard trucks to park in front of their houses.

I particularly like the little bit about how they will hold off on implementation while these important privacy concerns can be addressed.

Who wants to bet that addressing this means waiting under a rock until no one's looking and then going forward with substantially the same nonsense?

I agree, it will be a "wait until they forget" approach or "wait until we pay off enough people that no one can do anything regardless" instead.

Either way, if it should someone make it out, then the best way to fight back is to attack the wallet and make all the data collected "useless" in a sense.

This site uses a small script and the clients who visit with their web browser as a tool to visit junk, random, or non-existent sites so that they won't be able to collect any meaningful data. Get enough pe

The congressmen can actually do something. The customers are stuck in a high speed internet monopoly. My parents have Charter internet and it basically works when it feels like it. But their other options are dial-up or satellite. Charter doesn't care about the customers because it doesn't have to.

My parents have Charter internet and it basically works when it feels like it. But their other options are dial-up or satellite. Charter doesn't care about the customers because it doesn't have to.

I have charter internet, and actually it's pretty fucking awesome.

When I heard about Charter's disgusting NebuAds plan, I signed up for ATT's least expensive DSL plan - 768k for $20/mo, simultaneously with my Charter account. After a month I intend to choose one. My desire is to switch to ATT, first in order to

From a high price of $16 a share in January 2002 to closing at $1.12 today, a loss of 93%! Not too far away from being just another Worldcom or Enron. Clearly this is a company that knows what it's doing, and means business!

In many areas the local government has granted specific companies exclusive rights to operate coax runs, that's a monopoly on cable internet service in that specific area, no other company can come in and offer cable internet service. The same is true of DSL, whoever owns the lines can jack up prices and neglect to upgrade their network, and they do.

The effect is that you don't have true competition, in any given area you have at most 2-3 competitors between classes of service, and its obviously not enough.

In many areas the local government has granted specific companies exclusive rights to operate coax runs, that's a monopoly on cable internet service in that specific area, no other company can come in and offer cable internet service. The same is true of DSL, whoever owns the lines can jack up prices and neglect to upgrade their network, and they do.

The effect is that you don't have true competition, in any given area you have at most 2-3 competitors between classes of service, and its obviously not enough. You can claim there is no monopoly on "internet service" but that's not the point, there are still damaging effects on the market.

An example, Comcast is only rolling out DOCSIS3 in areas where FiOS is a threat, and Verizon is only rolling out FiOS in areas where other services are a threat. If they were forced to compete with other providers for the same service type they wouldn't be playing these fucking games.

1. So, to draw a conclusion from your own post, you can see that most companies are rolling out new technologies where they have to to stay competitive. Sounds like sound business premise to me, but what do I know.

2. As far as companies being granted de facto use of the lines they themselves paid to have laid, and in some cases have to lease from other utility companies, that's called incentive. They don't > to come in, at the cost of millions, and either acquire the rights of way to install the equ

You turned this into a rant against open source in only a few posts. Nice.

First, most of the coax and copper rolled out was put in place a LONG time ago, and the costs for doing so have been recovered many times over by the owner. Second, there was a rule that phone companies had to at least lease the lines at fair prices to other providers, not free as you tried to slip in to the argument, but fair competitive prices so that the line owner was compensated while still allowing for competition. That is gone

You turned this into a rant against open source in only a few posts. Nice.

First, most of the coax and copper rolled out was put in place a LONG time ago, and the costs for doing so have been recovered many times over by the owner. Second, there was a rule that phone companies had to at least lease the lines at fair prices to other providers, not free as you tried to slip in to the argument, but fair competitive prices so that the line owner was compensated while still allowing for competition. That is gone now and what everyone knew would happen, did. There is one DSL provider in most areas if not all areas, and they ALL FUCKING SUCK.

Competition between classes is not a solution, nether is dial-up so don't even try to pretend its relevant anymore, and satellite has ~800ms latency which is not acceptable, not to mention its ALSO slower than DSL anyway. You can pretend latency doesn't matter but it shows you are being short sighted, try working on a remote server with SSH and tell me 1 second latency doesn't matter.

Well, I can tell we will have to disagree on the subject, since you won't let anything else be relevant on the matter, it can't be.

Satellite doesn't exist. DSL doesn't, either. Cable modems, according to you, are useless in the areas they are in, as is any other type of internet connection.

Amazingly, I USE both AT&T DSL as well as a microwave link. I'm happy with both. I'd be happier with Comcast for my internet (I've not had any issues with packet dropping, etc., but then again, I don't really use

Get's a little old, however, hearing people throwing around the term "monopoly" or "monopolistic" when they really don't know what the FUCK they are talking about.

Most of the places I've lived, there was only one choice for terrestrial high-speed connections. The only other "option" was something like IDSL, expensive and slower than high speed offerings. Satellite is an option for anyone that doesn't mind round trip times of 1 second that creep up to 3 seconds in high-usage time, often with really low c

Satellite is an option for anyone that doesn't mind round trip times of 1 second that creep up to 3 seconds in high-usage time,

Also in order to use this you need a large antenna which has line of sight to the satellite. In some cases this might be physically impossible. In other cases landlords/local government may make the installation difficult.

God forbid if it was SabianUser I would have had to disagree. Good thing/. ers have good taste all around.

Protip: Paiste means "shine" or "glow" in Finnish. (Or even one odd presens case of "to fry [ambiguous]")PS. Protip has nothing to do with Paiste/Sabian thing.PPS. I demand +mods for most convoluted post in ages.

Last week, we pointed out that NebuAd shares five high-ranking employees in common with notorious spyware outfit Claria Corp. (nee Gator Corp). And now we've learned that they share a sixth. NebuAd's Washington DC counsel, Reed Freeman, was Claria's chief privacy officer.